• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, February 25, 2008

Ad Spending on Academy Awards More Than $650 Million over the Past 10 Years

As a retrospect on advertising on the Academy Awards show, TNS Media Intelligence has compiled key figures and trends on the past ten years of Academy Awards advertising.

Often referred to in advertising circles as "the Super Bowl for women", the event continues to be a marquee franchise for advertisers. According to TNS Media Intelligence, marketers have spent over $650 million during the past decade to advertise during the live network TV broadcast of the awards ceremony.

Over the past 10 years, the price of a :30 second spot in the Academy Awards has increased by 75 percent, reaching $1.67 million in 2007. Total ad spend in the show has almost doubled during this period. The cost of a :30 unit in the ceremony has consistently been about 35 percent less than the Super Bowl.

The aggregate spending from a short list of blue-chip advertisers, representing a diverse range of categories, accounted for $381.2 million, or over 60 percent of the total amount, during the past ten Academy Award shows.

On average, over the past ten years, 75 percent of the yearly ad spend in the telecast has come from advertisers who bought time the previous year. This is a higher retention level than the 63% the Super Bowl achieves (63 percent), says the report.

As viewing choices continue to expand, the TV audience continues to splinter and ratings get smaller. The Academy Awards telecast has not been immune to this trend. Audience levels have declined by about 25 percent over the past decade, and the long-term trend is unmistakably downward, as it is for TV programming in general.

In recent years, the show has been averaging 9-10 minutes of network ads per hour. This amount includes 7-8 minutes of paid messages with the remainder being promotional plugs from the network for its own programming. The comparable figure for the Super Bowl is 10.5 -12.0 minutes per hour and for a typical hour of prime time network programming it is 14-15 minutes.

In a typical year there are several advertisers who run spots in both the Academy Awards and the Super Bowl - one-fourth to one-third of Academy Awards advertisers also bought time in the Super Bowl.

However, notes the report, every four years, the Winter Olympics provides advertisers with a third option to the Academy Awards and the Super Bowl. This was the case in 2006, where many perennial mutual Oscars and Super Bowl advertisers opted out of one of these events in favor of the Olympics.

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